 A client was asking me about a method of doing video where, or maybe it was an image or video where it was like visual contrast and they try to get people's attention by visual interruption, essentially. And that is just one of many ways that marketers try to get your attention. And isn't that what we're supposed to do in marketing? To get people's attention, to do whatever outrageous thing to be unusual, to be louder, to be funnier, to be more attractive or whatever it may be. And the problem that people don't see with trying to get attention is that it is ultimately unsustainable. Whatever you do to try to get attention is whatever you don't do normally. Do you see what I mean? If you just act normally, if you just be yourself, as if you were with a friend who accepted you for just who you are, then you attract people who accept you for who you are. If you try to get attention, you are acting out of what you don't usually do. And so you'll either have to keep acting that way to try to keep people's attention or you come back to your normal self and they are disillusioned because you no longer are acting in the way that you got their attention with. Do you see what I mean? So marketing, that's why so many people don't like marketing because it's fake. They do things in a way that they don't usually do in conversations with friends or with clients even. So instead of trying to get attention, the irony is that I'm trying to blend in. Stay with me here. I'm trying to blend in so that only the people that are meant for me will notice me. I'm not trying to get your attention. And in fact, in the past few years, my marketing has evolved. I used to go on dog walks and try to make my backgrounds look pretty. I was trying too hard, I realized, to try to make my background look pretty. Now I'm trying to be as boring as possible. Not really, but you know what I mean? I'm like this with clients and I don't want to change that. This is what you're going to see when you work with me. Sometimes I'm in the other room, but it's one of these two rooms. I don't have the energy to change out the poster and to change out Gandhi. I don't have the energy to change these things out. It's probably going to be up for years and I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is going to be if you want to work with me. However, I mean some of you do. Some of you are excited. Some of you are genuinely interested in getting these things changed and changing your shirt. Do what you is the message here. And if whatever is most you is most attractive to the people that are meant for you. So you don't have to try to get anyone's attention. What you need to do is figure out what is most you and be that. And what's most me is not having a different shirt or having different backgrounds or having cool video editing. If you enjoy video editing or if you enjoy paying someone to do your video editing and putting cool stuff in, great, go for it. If it's something you enjoy, if it's that kind of art you enjoy, then enjoy it. And that's really the key here. So instead of trying to get attention, compete, manipulate, bait, be louder, be more attractive, be something that you're not already, figure out what you most enjoy doing in your expression. What is most authentic about you? What do I most enjoy? I most enjoy. This isn't real for me. When I talk, when I get excited, I move my hands and I talk like this with a friend who is accepting of me and with a client who really loves my work and I really can help that person out. I'm like this. This is how I talk. And so I enjoy this. And so I'm going to be like this in my marketing too. And the people that are meant for me will find that attractive and find that interesting. And the people who aren't meant for me, who's like, God, I don't like that George always wears the same shirt. He always has the same backgrounds. It's boring. Great. There are plenty of other things you can watch. Right. And actually some people don't like to watch my videos and they just read my articles. And some people find my articles boring and they watch my videos. However, however, however people like to consume the message is great. But I'm not going to twist myself to be like anybody else and to say, well, marketing says you should do this and you should do that. And the first, you know, you should change your background or you should. Yeah, you know, but that's, that's what's so tricky about all this is that. Of course, if I change my background, it's going to attract more people because I'll be appealing to more of the masses. But here's the problem when you try to get attention. You appeal to the masses because you get their attention, right? Because you're out of the ordinary. You're like more, more like, you know, interesting or more visually appealing than somebody else and you get the masses attention. And what happens is you end up either dumbing down your message to the masses. So you're no longer really serving your true fans and your ideal audience and no longer making the kind of impact that you really want to make number one. Or number two is now your advertising costs go up because you've got a bunch of people that you're, when you pay on Facebook, for example, those of you taking my Facebook class understand what I'm talking about here. When you're getting attention on Facebook with warm ads, what's happening is that you have to pay to reach the people who have engaged with your content in some way. And so lots of people who are not meant for you have engaged with your content. You're paying more to reach people that are not meant for you to reach. You get a lot of traffic on your website. Now you have to try to reach them. You're paying more money to try to reach them. So it's foolish. You would actually rather have fewer people engaging with you, who are the right people, fewer people visiting your website, less traffic, but the right traffic so that when you do warm audience outreach and warm audience ads, same thing with your email newsletter. If you have a lot of subscribers, you pay a lot of money for the email. You pay your email subscriber software more money every month for the wrong people and your open rates are lower. And then your email deliverability goes down. Fewer people are getting it in the primary box. More people are getting in the promotions box or in their spam. See, people don't get it. Marketing is not about more people. I mean, it's in some ways about more, but really at first it's about the right people. And you find the right people. You then find out what the right people like about you that you really like about you. And then you do more of that. And then naturally word of mouth spread so that you find more of the right people. So instead of trying to work to get attention, which is why so many of us hate marketing because it feels like work. Marketing, when it's done well, shouldn't really feel like work. It should feel like an enjoyable, authentic expression. It should feel like I want to connect with the people who really can be served by my message or by my work. I want to, I have this heart of compassion and I want to help them. And that's why I'm doing the marketing. The marketing itself is the service. It's part of this, the start of the service anyway. And then you get to serve them even deeper with your work, your services or products. So the other part of this about getting attention is that it's extrinsically motivated, right? You're trying to see what triggers people. And then you do more of that instead of coming to a deeper place of saying, what is really the most me when I'm with somebody, when I'm with my audience, that really accepts me and they really are happy about what I'm talking about or the way I'm expressing myself when I'm being real. And it's true. You have multiple ways of authentic expression. Maybe you have 10, 20 different authentic expressions and you find out what part of your authentic expression your ideal audience likes the most and they like number two and seven or three and five or whatever. Then you do more of that because that's the intersection between your passion and what the world wants from you. So that's the intersection. But when we are trying to get attention, it's like the Instagram models and it's like the YouTubers who are burning out. They're just trying to keep up a front to get attention, to look prettier, to look more handsome, to look this or to look that because they want to get more likes. And the chasing of the numbers blinds them to the fact that they're not actually touching in with their authentic self and their authentic expression. And so it's not sustainable. Whereas the way that I do marketing is sustainable year after year after year after year because I just find more and more of myself to share with you. And I find what parts of me, the real me that you like. And I studied that and I go, that's interesting. Okay, fine. I'll talk more about that stuff. The stuff that you don't like as much, I'll talk less of it or maybe I'll build a new audience and talk about that. Let me see what else I took a couple of notes here. So ultimately, you have to discern the difference for yourself. Ultimately, it's not about being more like George Cowell or like anybody else. Ultimately, it is noticing how am I doing this to try to chase the numbers, to try to get more likes. And instead, how am I expressing that something I really, really believe that I really think is important to say and to say it in a way that I really enjoy saying it or writing it or photography or art or whatever it is. Like I said, some of you might enjoy video editing and you'll want to do it yourself or pay someone to do it and you really enjoy that process. I don't. All my videos will be unedited, raw, completely unedited. With all the mistakes in there. Because the other part of it, and I want to say this, this is important too. The other part of it is I don't care about not pleasing some of you. This is important. So I don't care about not being perfect because I don't care about losing some viewers or some readers because if I don't enjoy video editing, but I know I'll get more viewers if I do that. Oh, people will consume it longer if I edit my videos out. But the thing is if I don't enjoy it and it's not money I want to spend, it's not sustainable. I would rather spend money reaching more of my right people with Facebook ads and Instagram ads and all that stuff. So it's okay to make mistakes as you normally would when you are with a friend who accepts you. It's okay to make those mistakes. Another example I've said before is I no longer respond as promptly as other people probably want me to respond. When you comment on my things, it'll take me three to five to seven to ten days to respond. And I know I lose people by not being as fast at responding. But I just don't want to spend that energy. I don't have the energy. I do so much already. I don't have the energy to respond to you quickly. But that's sustainable for me. You see, wait for my response three, five, seven, ten days. But you'll get a response probably eventually. And if that's not okay for you, there are plenty of other people who can serve you more quickly. Now, whether that's sustainable for them is another question. Oh, here's one. Here's one that rubs some people the wrong way. I made a decision a couple years ago to never say happy birthday to anybody ever again. This is weird. I know this is weird. Hang on with, just watch this. Even if it's your birthday, even if I know it's your birthday, I'm not going to say happy birthday to you. I'm not going to send you a message. I'm not going to post on your Facebook. I'm not going to, because I got to a point where I had hundreds of clients to say happy birthday to. Like every day I had to like send and it no longer felt meaningful. It was like, okay, all right, I got to say my happy birthday today. And it's just like, I fake pretend to like, I wish you this and I wish you that. And it's like, it's my third one today. And it's like, no, I want to stop doing that. My third one is just wishing happy birthday. And it's, and yeah, and it's like, and I realized, okay, when it's my birthday, I don't care if anybody wishes me happy birthday. So I hid my birthday. None of you are hopefully don't wish me happy birthday because I realized that it's just a social convention and I don't care about that anymore. I just don't care about it. I care more about am I serving you. That's more important for me. That's more meaningful for me. So I found a different way to define meaning and relationships instead of wishing happy birthday. So I know I lose people because they're like, George, I'm your client. You didn't wish me happy birthday. I feel bad, you know, I feel badly about it. Sorry. If you want to coach that which is your happy birthday. There are plenty of other coaches. I wish I wish you well as you go work with them. You see what I mean? You got to do what's sustainable for you. And if I lose people, great, because then I am more people to serve who don't care if I forget to wish them happy birthday or don't care about wishing even if I saw my calendar. I don't want to. I don't want that. You see what I mean? So that's just, it could be sounds like a silly example or a petty example, but it's real. And let's see what other mistake. I mean, okay, like my, my books are not super well edited. I'm grateful for my volunteer editors. And it's like every fifth chapter becomes a different editor and the voice is a little different. I don't care. If I'm going to lose you because of that, there are more than enough books for you to read. I don't need. I don't need to hoard your attention. And see, that's really the main point is. I think that's the magic of truly sustainable marketing and truly authentic marketing is you stop giving a damn about making mistakes and losing people. You just, you just stop, stop that, you know, and you know that the people who are left are the ones who are just meant for you. They resonate with your truth. They resonate with your style and they don't mind your mistakes. They don't mind your weaknesses or your flaws and I have plenty. You see what I mean? So I'm not trying to be perfect and neither should you have to be perfect. You just have to be you to discover what that more, more, more of that means. What is most meaningful for you? What is most purposeful for you and to be that stronger and stronger and more and more every day. And to use Facebook ads to get you out to more people so that you can filter out the people. You know, you use Facebook ads for a million of the possible right people and then it turns out 10,000 of those are really right for you. Great. You don't have to be for everybody. You don't. Don't worry about your weaknesses and your mistakes and your flaws. I don't like the happy birthday thing. It pisses some people off. Okay, fine. And what other, I mean, there's every day I'm like, Oh yeah, that's a mistake that I don't mind making that I don't mind turning some people off. It's okay. I'm not perfect. Right. So I hope this is helpful. I hope that you will go forward and discover that. Yes, you can fully be you. Whatever that means. And it might look very different from how I, how I'm me. And that's great too. Right. So I want to thank those who are here and Linda, Alejandra, Roberto, Jason, Gemma, Lisa, Vivian, Jock here, Shweta, Paul, Emily, Melissa. And that's something that I genuinely enjoy doing. I generally enjoy reading out your names. And I don't mind doing that, you know, because it's, it's fun for me. And I like that kind of connection. And let's see a couple of comments here. Yeah, Alejandra says not just birthday, which is Mother's Day, Father's Day, Valentine's Day, and so on. Fast driven. Well, okay, I would say Mother's Day, Father's Day. If you, if you're just talking about your own parents, I think there's only one person. Like, so the other things I do wish happy birthday to my, to my family members, because there's only a few of them. Okay. But not my clients, not my true fans, nobody else, just, just a few people. Happy Mother's Day to my mom, happy Father's Day to my dad. But not to all of you who are mothers, all of you who are dads. It's like, it's too much. It's come on. It's a, you know, Valentine's Day to my spouse. Great. But not like, oh, you know, and, and, and yes, I mean, posting a single, posting a single happy Mother's Day. On your Facebook. That's easy. I mean, that's, that's nothing. And that might mean something to somebody. If you enjoy it, great. But what I mean is like, happy birthday to every single person every day of the year. It's insane. I mean, it's, some people literally just type happy birthday. They've done their deed for the day. They know that it means something to someone. If they enjoy that, great. Keep doing it. But I'm not, I'm, I for one will not participate in that. Yeah. Gemma says, yeah. A happy birthday thing. I don't enjoy it when people say, say it to me without meaning it. Yeah. Yeah. Lisa says, yeah, a bunch of forced expression on the happy birthday wishes. Jason says being yourself and you will track the right people. Yeah. And Alejandro says, yeah, pleasing people is such a sucker. Yeah. Drains on, drains your energy. It doesn't really work either. Yeah. Because if you, if you're pleasing, if you're trying to please your audience, you will have to keep trying. But if you're just being you and it's pleasing to your audience, then you can just being, keep being you. And that's the point, right? Thanks, Melissa, for your comment there as well and Shelley. And let's see what else Roberto, Shweta, thank you. Shweta says, no apologies needed. Yeah. Giovanna, thank you. Okay. Well, that's it. Go forth. Know that you can be yourself and the right people will be drawn to you. And you don't have to apologize for not attracting everybody else. Okay. Be well and I will see you in the next video.